OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENTOld Royal Dockyard at Sheerness in Kent (Spitalfields Trust)

We
have given this special award only twice before, to Stowe and to Dumfries
House, but have no hesitation in giving it this year to the Spitalfields Trust for their
extraordinary rescue of the surviving historic quarter of the Old Royal Dockyard at Sheerness.
Much of it was lost when the dockyard shut in the late 1960s. What survived the
wrecking ball were two fine terraces of 1820s officers’ houses and a church,
but these fell into increasing dereliction. One terrace was abandoned except
for a single doughty tenant, the church was wrecked by arsonists, the fine
gardens were converted to a lorry park and the whole site was bought in 2003 by
a property developer who proposed to cover much of it with housing. That would
have been the death knell, but the Spitalfields Trust, though extraordinary
perseverance, canny negotiation and sheer bloody-mindedness, wrested the site
off the developer and are bringing it back to its former glory. It is a work in
progress but the future is assured. Astonishingly, the huge Admiral’s house is
being restored as a single private residence and the church, once restored,
will house Rennie’s gigantic scale model of the dockyard. It is the
conservation triumph of the millennium so far and as a very public expression
of confidence in a deprived part of north Kent it deserves high praise.

DIAPHOROS PRIZEKilboy, Co Tipperary

This
year we institute what we are choosing to call the Diaphoros Prize, from the Greek meaning ‘different‘ and ‘excellent’.
It allows us the indulgence of recognising a project outside our normal
geographical sphere that has caught our eye in some way, perhaps for its exceptional
architecture, its value as an exemplar or its spark of imagination. Our
inaugural prize goes toKilboy,a new country house by Quinlan and Francis Terry Architects for Mr and Mrs Shane Ryan.

The
original house was built during the second half of the 18th Century in a
Palladian style to the designs of William Leeson but was demolished in 1952 and
replaced with a bungalow. This is a creative restoration, loosely based on the
original rather than a direct copy. It also references Palladio’s Villa Rotunda
but with an elliptical rather than circular central dome. The front elevation
has a double height Doric portico with Gibbsian rusticated window surrounds on
the piano nobile. In the spirit of
Irish Classicism, the principal rooms have sumptuous Rococo style ceilings
which echo the work of the Francini brothers who worked extensively in Ireland
during the 18th Century. For sheer breadth of vision, attention to detail,
quality of execution, architectural power and dramatic set-pieces, such as the
inner stair hall with its coved plasterwork ceiling, Kilboy is a phenomenal
achievement. It is indeed excellent and different, and we are delighted to make
it the very first winner of the Diaphoros Prize.

RESTORATION
OF A GEORGIAN COUNTRY HOUSE

WINNER

Shanks House, Somerset demonstrates that the best restoration is not always visually dramatic.
Sometimes the finest work is the most discreet. Here we have a 17th
century core with an early eighteenth century five-bay house attached. By the
time it came onto the market in 2010, for the first time since the 1950s, the
grander parts were abandoned and shuttered up. The risk is always that a new
broom will sweep too clean, purging a place of its atmosphere, but the
brilliance here is the economy and lightness of touch, improving the landscape
setting, sensitively converting outbuildings andrevivifying the house without disturbing its genius loci. Thatch has been restored to the stables, the kitchen
restored to its eighteenth century location and the house repaired and
replanned with intelligence and verve. (Ptolemy Dean Architects for Mrs and Mrs Roland Rudd)

COMMENDED

Cholderton House, Wiltshire In a year in which Clandon has been reduced to a
shell by fire, it is worth remembering that convincing and intellectually
respectable resurrection is possible.Cholderton, a late seventeeth century house with a
substantial Georgian remodelling, is a phoenix that has risen from the ashes.
An intense fire in 2012 left only the four walls and a central spine wall
standing. Unlike Clandon, the house was not well-documented, but armed with
such photographs as existed and clear direction from the client, Donald Insall
Associates have restored the ground and first floors as faithfully as possible.
Some material was salvaged and some improvements were made, for example
replacing 1980s standard bricks with red rubbed bricks. Joinery and cornices were recreated from
photographic evidence. The result is an intelligent, sensitive restoration. (Donald Insall Associates for the Executors of the Late Mrs Mary Cornelius-Reid)

COMMENDED

Darsham House in
Suffolk A 17th/18th century blend, Darsham epitomises the ‘coaxing
back to life’ approach. It had suffered neglect and poor quality alterations,
some of them unauthorised. Nine enforcement notices were inherited by the
present owners when they bought the house. With Nicholas Jacob Architects they
have unpicked intrusive modern repairs, modified some of the more intrusive
alterations and restored appropriate detailing. The result has been to enhance
and reveal the building’s character – and associated research and recording
mean that its historical development is now far better understood. (Nicholas Jacob Architects for Edgar Laguinia and Glenn Brown)

RESTORATION OF A
GEORGIAN INTERIOR

JOINT WINNER

PRIVATE APARTMENTS, SIR
JOHN SOANE’S MUSEUM Even
those familiar with its treasures will be astonished by this new addition to the Soane Museum. His private apartments, lost but now remade, give an acute psychological insight into Soane's bizarre mind. They are
at once a shrine, a statement of architectural history and a kind of Pharaonic
tomb that compress Soane's ideas and passions with extraordinary density. After
her death, he filled his wife’s bedroom with models of Pompeii, Paestum and
other ancient sites; even his son George's bath, now recreated, was given a lid
and turned into a kind of Canoptic jar of personal effects. All this has been
authentically recreated with jaw-dropping meticulousness and attention to
detail. (Julian Harrap Architects for The Trustees of Sir John Soane's Museum)

JOINT WINNER

Remarkably,
we have a second authentic restoration of a lost Soane interior this year. The SOANE
TRIBUNE at WOTTON HOUSE in Buckinghamshire has been recreated by Ptolemy
Dean under the guiding intelligence of the owner, David Gladstone. Vestigial remains were discovered within A. S. G. Butler’s
closing-in of the 1920s. These have been forensically investigated, allowing
the progressive recreation of the complex and delicate geometry of the tribune.
The counter-intuitive act of restoring the space from the ‘top down’, allowing
each level to be restored before breaking out the inserted Butler floor, was
inspired, cutting the need for expensive scaffolding and allowing the work to
remain compartmentalised while the house remained in occupation throughout. All
in all, a triumph.

This suite of rooms was created by William Kent in the 1730s as private apartments for George II’s
son the Duke of Cumberland. For two centuries it served as grace and favour
accommodation before becoming a gallery in 1952. Redecoration in the 1960s
further degraded Kent’s original scheme and the joinery was also deteriorating.
That has been sensitively repaired. In the Withdrawing Room old panel mouldings
have been reinstated (or recovered from beneath veneer) and the Presence
Chamber and Large Light Closet have been restored to their original appearance.
A set of rooms that had become a dark cul-de-sac in the depths of the Palace
has been dramatically transformed.

COMMENDED

The
four MONTAGU MONUMENTS, at St Edmund’s
Church in Northamptonshire, are works of international importance by Roubiliac
and Peter Van Gelder. There is really no comparable set of Georgian monuments
in any other English parish church. The 1751 chancel was built to accommodate
them; it is really a sculpture gallery, a complete interior, but by the end of
the twentieth century its key features were at serious risk from corroding iron
support rods. The Roubiliac of John Duke of Montagu, for example, was being
actively destroyed by expansion and had to be deconstructed and put back
together in a delicate surgical operation. At the same time, all the monuments
were sensitively cleaned in a way that preserved their patina. (Skillington Workshop for Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust and Parochial Church Council of St Edmund's Church, Warkton)

RESTORATION OF A
GEORGIAN BUILDING IN AN URBAN SETTING

WINNER

BELMONT HOUSE in LYME REGIS is a 1785 maritime villa looking out over the Cobb.
John Fowles wrote The French Lieutenant’s
Woman here. By the time he died it was in a bad state, the gardens
overgrown and the structural condition of the building poor. The Landmark Trust
acquired it and took the decision, at once brave and controversial, to restore
it to the form known by Mrs Coade, creator of the artificial stone that bears
her name. That involved demolishing what was left of the substantial Victorian
and later extensions in order to make it a villa in the round. The project has
been informed by meticulous building analysis and documentary research and the
building is now again a thing of real beauty, a delightful monument to one of
the great female entrepreneurs of the Georgian period.

COMMENDED

31 GREAT JAMES STREET in Holborn shows the dramatic visual effect of well-judged improvements
to a London townhouse. Like many other houses in the street, this one from 1722
had plate glass one-over-one sashes. We have never been much good at the
Georgian Group at accepting that such things ought to be kept as part of the
history of a building – it gives a sadly blank-eyed appearance that cries out
for remediation. So we were delighted to see traditional sashes boldly
reinstated, along with crown glass and excellent tuck-pointing with lime
mortar. The public face of the building is transformed – suddenly it becomes
once more a comfortable and welcoming piece of architecture, appropriate for
its new use as a family home. (Cowper Griffith Architects for a private client)

COMMENDED

76 DEAN STREET, in Soho, dating from 1732, is another building that suffered a
catastrophic fire that gutted the building and destroyed a notable staircase
mural. Six years later it has recovered its former glory as a private members’
club. As much material as possible was salvaged and some infelicitous
interventions were reversed - twentieth century parquet floors, for example,
were replaced with stone in the hall. Jon Brinklow restored the mural. Few
enough buildings of this age and quality survive in Soho for the fire to have
been a real disaster, but the recovery and restoration programme was exemplary
and shows that out of adversity can come something truly uplifting. (SODA Architects for Soho Estates and Soho House)

REUSE OF A
GEORGIAN BUILDINGWINNER

13 ELY PLACE in HOLBORN has spectacularly recovered its true personality courtesy
of the reinstatement of glazing bars. In the twentieth century it was a school
and then a convent, during which time it suffered the usual indignities of ugly
partitioning, crudely inserted services and thick coats of while emulsion. It
has now been restored for use as charity offices, on a limited budget, and we
hold it up as an example of how commercial use of a Georgian townhouse need not
rule out sensitive restoration and conversion. It is testament to the enduring
adaptability of such buildings that they are still wanted and needed as
offices. If that is so, we may as well learn how to do it well. Such projects
are vulnerable to the kind of over-excited contemporary makeover which can
leave buildings a schizophrenic mess. 13 Ely Place offers a more sensitive, and
indeed longer-lasting, solution. (Russell Taylor Architects for St Ethedreda Trust)

COMMENDED

PORTAFERRY
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, COUNTY DOWN dates from the very end of our period, the
late 1830s, and is one of the finest classical buildings in Ulster. The
problems of a small, cash-strapped congregation showed themselves in marked
deterioration of the fabric and a repair backlog that stretched back fifty
years. How to rescue such a building? Often redundancy would be a serious
threat, and with it the risk that the building would lose its special
atmosphere and meaning. The imaginative solution here was sensitively to
introduce new uses alongside continued use as a church – in effect, a sharing of
the building. A Friends’ group took ownership in 2014 and has undertaken
extensive restoration - replacing cement with lime render and reinstating clear
glass 12/9 windows - while refitting the building for multiple use as an arts,
exhibition and heritage centre. The sensitive marriage of secular and religious
uses has given the building an assured future. (Maxwell Pierce Architects for The Friends of Portaferry Presbyterian Church)

RESTORATION OF A
GEORGIAN GARDEN OR LANDSCAPE

WINNER

CROOME PARK,
WORCESTERSHIRE is a majestic designed landscape by Capability Brown, the
tercentenary of whose birth is next year. Croome is a superb flagship project
with which to celebrate that anniversary. It has taken twenty years of
backbreaking work and tortuous land assembly by The National Trust to recover the glories of Brown’s
design. As always with him, it was a very precisely considered piece of work,
each element linking to the next in a constant flow of intellectual energy.
Nothing is accidental. But all sense of meaning had been horribly lost beneath
acres of arable, with lakes full of silt, planting patterns obscured or destroyed
and the fine garden buildings left to rot. Some of them, like the Chinese
bridge, disappeared; in 2015 it was triumphantly reborn, leading the feet and
eye across to distant prospects. The Rotunda and ice house have also been
rescued from a state of near terminal dereliction, and now the huge walled
garden is being restored and reintegrated into the estate. A fractured
landscape has been mended and in the process has recovered its point and
purpose.

COMMENDED

THE BOTANIC
COTTAGE, EDINBURGH is an heroic rescue of a garden building of real historic
importance. Dating from 1763, it was used by the Regius Professor of Botany as
a classroom, at the height of the Scottish Enlightenment. But it was abandoned
when the Royal Botanic Garden moved to its present site. Marooned in an
increasingly urbanised environment, it gradually fell into dereliction,
becoming almost unrecognisable; it was used as a drugs den and then acquired by
a developer for demolition. A magnificent restoration effort has seen it moved
piece by piece to the new Botanic Garden. It is a triumph of craftsmanship and
scholarly research and the beautifully-restored upper floor will now function,
once again, as a botany classroom. (Simpson & Brown Architects for the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh)

COMMENDED

FELTON PARK
GREENHOUSE, NORTHUMBERLAND dates from about 1830 and is set within a 1774 walled garden. It is one of the earliest
surviving buildings to use slender, curved wrought iron glazing bars and fish
scale glass, an innovative design technique pioneered by John Claudius Loudon,
the great garden designer and hothouse expert. So it is an important building,
but also a fragile one that could easily have fallen into an irreversible
spiral of decline. Happily, Tim Maxwell has led an exemplary restoration, with
meticulous cleaning and repair of the multitude of panes, wrought-iron glazing
bars and internal iron furniture such as window hooks, vine wires and
ventilator flaps. Such painstaking work requires commitment, patience and
attention to detail, all of which are evident here in the deeply impressive
results. (Spence and Dower Architects for Timothy and Annelie Maxwell)

NEW BUILDING IN
THE CLASSICAL TRADITIONWINNER

BIGHTON GRANGE,
HAMPSHIRE Few contemporary country houses are this
self-assured or achieve such a degree of quiet dignity and inherent harmony. It
is in essence a villa, in white brick with Portland stone dressings, and takes
its inspiration from the Regency, when red brick was conventionally seen as too
harsh for the landscape and there was a desire for very light interiors. There
are also flashes of the picturesque, as you might see in an Italianate villa by
Nash. Whatever the sources, the result is a subtle and refined composition that
suggests a sensitive client and an architect reaching confident maturity. (George Saumarez Smith of ADAM Architecture for Paul Steggall and Shameem Sangha)

COMMENDED

ST CATHERINE’S on JERSEY follows a vernacular idiom,
using a buff-coloured granite common in the Channel Islands and Brittany, but
as you would expect from the architects it is a scholarly and deeply considered
composition. The five-bay pedimented central block is flanked by wings, each
terminated by strikingly tall Venetian windows; one of them contains a library
influenced by Kent’s at Holkham. Equally striking are their unusual pedimented
centrepieces sheltering urn-filled niches. The deep sensitivity to place and
rootedness in context are compelling; being able to combine that in a
convincing way with complex architectural allusions and scholarly classical
references is a rare skill. It can easily be done badly but it is difficult to
do it this well. (Quinlan & Francis Terry Architects for Justin Huggler)

THE GILES WORSLEY
AWARD FOR A NEW BUILDING IN A GEORGIAN CONTEXT

We
were delighted to be able to name this award, introduced in 2006, in honour of
the distinguished architectural historian Dr Giles Worsley, who served as a
Trustee of the Georgian Group for many years and so sadly died ten years ago
next month. He is still missed and still remembered. The
award is an especially apt tribute to Giles, as he himself inspired it. He was,
as we know, equally comfortable with historic and contemporary buildings and he
sensibly saw past, present and future as part of the same continuum.

JOINT WINNER

47 CANONBURY
SQUARE, ISLINGTON is an uplifting project that repairs the truncated end of a typical London
terrace dating from 1831. The missing house was partly demolished in 1937,
supposedly because of structural problems, although apocryphally because the
landlord wanted rid of undesirable tenants. The ground floor elevation survived
and together with neighbouring houses provided the evidence need for meticulous
restoration. There is something deeply satisfying about giving back to
mutilated terraces their proper form and dimensions – in this instance the
beneficial effect is magnified as the terrace sits in a square, so a regained sense
of enclosure is added to the mix. Plenty of damaged Georgian terraces have been
pieced back together with anaemic, half-hearted infill, but this project does
far more than pay lip service. It is an extraordinary accomplishment in an
ordinary environment. (Butler Hegarty Architects for Jacqueline Anne and Anthony Pointing)

JOINT WINNER

4A-6 GROVE LANE,
SOUTHWARK also involves the knitting back of lost and degraded
fabric, in this instance adding in a little joie
de vivre while remaining convincing in its detailing. Many fractured sites
like this in London have been blighted by third-rate residential architecture,
but here the result is absolutely harmonious and convincing. Much of that comes
from a genuine understanding and appreciation of context. Some of it comes from
attention to detail, for example in the use of deep reveals, crown glass,
reclaimed bricks and lime mortar. The result is a highly-enjoyable and
uplifting intervention. (MATT Architecture for Julian Kenny)